The Kurdish Democratic Society Party (DTP) was shut down by the Constitutional Court of Turkey, unanimously, sparking mass protests. Raphael Tsavkko Garcia takes a closer look at Kurdish blogs for reactions. Read more
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Not learning from Bhopal
It is 25 years of the Bhopal gas disaster—the night when chemicals spewed out of the Union Carbide factory to kill and maim thousands over generations. The question is if we have learnt from the disaster—learnt how to handle chemical accidents; to dispose of industrial toxic waste; to manage (...)
Righting the RTI (Right To Information)
Shailesh Gandhi’s work is proof that working in an accountable, democratic and transparent manner is possible in the official Right to Information machinery. Darryl D’Monte reports. Read
Our atom state
The atomic energy programme is an economic failure as well as an environmental disaster. Moreover, by its very functioning, the Atomic Energy Commission has undermined the democratic ideals of the nation. Although its power plants profess to produce goods for the benefit of the public, they are (...)
Seeking identity
Interview with Priya Babu, transgender activist.
PRIYA BABU has been working for the welfare of transsexuals as the leader of the Tamil Nadu Aravanigal Association and the managing trustee of the Social Integration and Development for Aravanis Foundation (SIDA). She hit the headlines five years ago when she filed a writ petition in the Madras (...)
Dictatorship more dangerous than climate change
Dictatorship presents ’a far more perilous threat to the survival of Africans than climate change’, Alemayehu G. Mariam writes in this week’s Pambazuka News. But with the widespread acknowledgement that global warming ‘could affect Africa disproportionately’, and that the continent is ‘entitled to (...)
Welcome to the Women’s Movement 2.0
What we really need is a new women’s health movement, one that’s sharp and skeptical enough to ask all the hard questions: What are the environmental (or possibly life-style) causes of the breast cancer epidemic? Why are existing treatments like chemotherapy so toxic and heavy-handed? And, if the (...)
Not all cultural traditions are worth keeping
‘Whatever our culture, we must treat animals in a humane way,’ William Gumede writes in this week’s Pambazuka News, following the recent approval of South African courts for the sacrifice of a bull as part of a traditional thanksgiving ritual. ‘African culture has a long tradition of democratic (...)
Equity question
India is in a unique predicament; it has a stake in both preventing climate change and avoiding costly mitigation. It is an unfortunate irony that India, with a third of the world’s poor and less than one-third the per capita carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions of the world average, is seen as a (...)
Maternal tragedies
A Human Rights Watch report emphasises the need for a system of recording and investigating all maternal deaths.
THE maternal mortality ratio (MMR) is calculated by the number of maternal deaths for every 100,000 births. Consider this: In 2005, India’s MMR was 16 times that of Russia, 10 times (...)
A real green deal
35 years ago, workers at the Lucas Aerospace company formulated an ‘alternative corporate plan’ to convert military production to socially useful and environmentally desirable purposes. What are the lessons for greening the world economy today? Read (...)
The heart of India is under attack
The government has announced Operation Green Hunt, a war purportedly against the "Maoist" rebels headquartered in the jungles of central India. Of course, the Maoists are by no means the only ones rebelling. There is a whole spectrum of struggles all over the country that people are engaged (...)
China: Detainees ‘Disappeared’ After Xinjiang Protests
The Chinese government should immediately account for all detainees in its custody and allow independent investigations into the July 2009 protests in Urumqi and their aftermath, Human Rights Watch said in a new report on enforced "disappearances" released today.
The 44-page report, "‘We Are (...)
Iran’s Post-Election Uprising: Hopes & Fears
Since the Revolution in 1979, Iranians have coped with an increasingly repressive regime. Attempts for greater social and political freedoms have resulted in brutal crackdowns by the hardline government. The ensuing apathy and significant boycott of the 2005 presidential elections led to the (...)
Guinea: Military Rule Must End
The killing of at least 160 participants in a peaceful demonstration, the rape of many women protestors, and the arrest of political leaders by security forces in Conakry on 28 September 2009 showed starkly the dangers that continued military rule poses to Guinea’s stability and to a region (...)
Modernizing Public Services through the Use of ICT’s : The Case of Senegal
Since 2000, armed with strong political good will, Senegal is implementing a development policy that lays much emphasis on ICT’s. Part of this strategy is the modernization of public services by using ICT to establish an adequate institutional framework, equipping government offices with (...)
South Africa needs an HIV/AIDS truth commission
The HIV/AIDS epidemic is one of the greatest challenges facing post-democracy South Africa. In 2007, the country, which is home to less than one per cent of the world’s population, carried 17 per cent of the global burden of HIV infection — and the virus continues to spread relentlessly.
The (...)
USA: Mapping DREAM Act Online Youth Movements
Immigrant high school and university students in the United States have used the internet effectively in building activist networks to support the passing of a law called the DREAM act.
«I have been living in the U.S. for most of my life and now that i have graduated high school i can’t continue (...)
Nobel Prize for Economics to Elinor Ostrom: Tragedy of the Commons R.I.P.
The biggest roadblock standing in the way of many people’s recognition of the importance of the commons came tumbling down this week when Indiana University professor Elinor Ostrom won the Nobel Prize for economics.
Over many decades Ostrom has documented how various communities manage common (...)
NeoConOpticon. The EU Security-Industrial Complex
Despite the often benign intent behind collaborative European ‘research’ into integrated land, air, maritime, space and cyber-surveillance systems, the EU’s security and R&D policy is coalescing around a high-tech blueprint for a new kind of security. It envisages a future world of red zones (...)